Wednesday, January 12, 2011

On the subject of influence, Part I

I've been thinking about a comment Didier Graffet made in the interview I linked to in yesterday's post. He said, "When I was younger and learning to paint, I was inspired by other artists' work, but now I avoid looking too much at the websites of other illustrators, even though they are good, everything is good, but I want to develop my own imagination."

I've been reflecting on both ends of that sentence: first, the ways we shape ourselves as writers and artists by discovering, loving, and pouring over the words and pictures of those who have come before us; and second, that vital moment when we turn away from others' work in order to travel inward and to map the realm of our own imaginations.

I'll talk more about that necessary turning point in a subsequent post. Today, however, I'd like to focus on the first part of the equation: "the ecstasy of influence" (to borrow a phrase from Jonathan Lethem's brilliant essay of that name, which I highly recommend). By "influential art," what I mean is art that we not only admire but take passionately to heart -- those life-changing books that we read and re-read, those paintings we look at over and over again -- prompted, I would hazzard to guess, by the feeling that there's a similar kind of magic within us, awakened or strengthened by our deep response to what another hand has created.

Sometimes this influence can be almost too strong and we find ourselves working in another artist's style, not our own -- think of all those imitation-Tolkien fantasy books, for example, or all those imitation-Brian-Froud faeries. And yet, I would argue, imitation is not necessarilywrong if it's part of a learning journey and not the journey's destination. Just as children imitate their elders, the training process for a budding writer or artist does sometimes involve a certain amount of mimicry -- not in order to steal another artist's style or ideas but as a means of developing technical skills that can later be applied to a more personal vision. As long as we don't take this student work as our real work, or attempt to put it before the public as such, then I think there is often no harm in this; on the contrary, it can be an important step toward finding our real work.

Our daughter, for example, wants to be a top chef; so right now, in addition to formally studying Culinary Arts, she also works as an apprentice to a Michelin Star level chef in one of London's most exacting kitchens. In learning to cook as he cooks, which she's expected to do without deviation, she is taking the first steps toward discovering her own personal style of cooking, while learning the technical skills she'll need in order to master her art. Likewise, when I think back on how I learned to write, or to paint, it seems to me it was a form of apprenticeship too -- although some of the masters I learned from were long dead, and others were ones I met only in the pages of books, never in the flesh. I learned by loving their work, by imitating their work, by thinking and talking and dreaming about their work . . . until I grew a bit older and enough time had passed that their work had begun to settle inside me, to mingle with my own life experience, and then to alchemize into words and pictures that slowly, slowly turned into a vision and style of my own.

J.R.R. Tolkien once likened fairytales to a soup in which bits of story have been simmering for centuries. Each storyteller dips into that soup, he says, but also adds her own ingredients and spices to make it new for each new audience. I think of "influence" in a similar way: the soup of my creativity is made up of everything I've read, seen, listened to, felt, and experienced -- strongly flavored by all the art that I've loved but stirred together in a way that is inevitably, uniquely my own. Some of the flavors in my soup are easy to identify: Arthur Rackham, Carl Larsson, and Beatrix Potter, for example, with a heaping teaspoon of Pre-Raphaelitism, a sprinkle of Angela Carter's fairy tales, a dash of Mary Oliver's poetry, a pinch of David Abram's ecological ideas. But other flavors that are just as crucial to the whole are perhaps only identifiable by me: my adolescent obsession with Romeo & Juliet, for instance (I can still recite the entire play by heart); or my teenage devotion to an obscure 1940s utopian novel called Islandia (somewhat dated now, and decidely non-pc, but it rocked my world at 16 nonetheless); or my late-20s Anais Nin fixation; or my life-long interest in the women war artists of WW1 and 2 (...and would you have guessed that last one?) Scholars, of course, build whole careers on identifying the ingredients of famous artistic soups -- but for artists, our job is to keep adding and stirring, and getting that taste just right.

The "Inspiration Board" above contains art by some of the people whose work has in some way influenced mine. I suspect many of you reading this blog will be able to identify the artists through the pictures themselves (hey, it's a party game, how many can you name?!)...but if any of them stump you, you'll find a list of all of them here (scroll to the bottom of the page).

No doubt there are younger artists out there for whom "Charles Vess" and "Didier Graffet" are promient names on their own lists of "Artists I Love." I imagine them now, pouring over books and prints, discussing their favorite writers and artists on chatboards, creating stories and drawings in which their influences are still too raw, unfiltered, and obvious...until slowly, slowly, something magical happens, and a style distinctly their own emerges. The work matures. Apprenticeship ends. They are artists.

Comments

On the subject of influence, Part I

I've been thinking about a comment Didier Graffet made in the interview I linked to in yesterday's post. He said, "When I was younger and learning to paint, I was inspired by other artists' work, but now I avoid looking too much at the websites of other illustrators, even though they are good, everything is good, but I want to develop my own imagination."

I've been reflecting on both ends of that sentence: first, the ways we shape ourselves as writers and artists by discovering, loving, and pouring over the words and pictures of those who have come before us; and second, that vital moment when we turn away from others' work in order to travel inward and to map the realm of our own imaginations.

I'll talk more about that necessary turning point in a subsequent post. Today, however, I'd like to focus on the first part of the equation: "the ecstasy of influence" (to borrow a phrase from Jonathan Lethem's brilliant essay of that name, which I highly recommend). By "influential art," what I mean is art that we not only admire but take passionately to heart -- those life-changing books that we read and re-read, those paintings we look at over and over again -- prompted, I would hazzard to guess, by the feeling that there's a similar kind of magic within us, awakened or strengthened by our deep response to what another hand has created.

Sometimes this influence can be almost too strong and we find ourselves working in another artist's style, not our own -- think of all those imitation-Tolkien fantasy books, for example, or all those imitation-Brian-Froud faeries. And yet, I would argue, imitation is not necessarilywrong if it's part of a learning journey and not the journey's destination. Just as children imitate their elders, the training process for a budding writer or artist does sometimes involve a certain amount of mimicry -- not in order to steal another artist's style or ideas but as a means of developing technical skills that can later be applied to a more personal vision. As long as we don't take this student work as our real work, or attempt to put it before the public as such, then I think there is often no harm in this; on the contrary, it can be an important step toward finding our real work.

Our daughter, for example, wants to be a top chef; so right now, in addition to formally studying Culinary Arts, she also works as an apprentice to a Michelin Star level chef in one of London's most exacting kitchens. In learning to cook as he cooks, which she's expected to do without deviation, she is taking the first steps toward discovering her own personal style of cooking, while learning the technical skills she'll need in order to master her art. Likewise, when I think back on how I learned to write, or to paint, it seems to me it was a form of apprenticeship too -- although some of the masters I learned from were long dead, and others were ones I met only in the pages of books, never in the flesh. I learned by loving their work, by imitating their work, by thinking and talking and dreaming about their work . . . until I grew a bit older and enough time had passed that their work had begun to settle inside me, to mingle with my own life experience, and then to alchemize into words and pictures that slowly, slowly turned into a vision and style of my own.

J.R.R. Tolkien once likened fairytales to a soup in which bits of story have been simmering for centuries. Each storyteller dips into that soup, he says, but also adds her own ingredients and spices to make it new for each new audience. I think of "influence" in a similar way: the soup of my creativity is made up of everything I've read, seen, listened to, felt, and experienced -- strongly flavored by all the art that I've loved but stirred together in a way that is inevitably, uniquely my own. Some of the flavors in my soup are easy to identify: Arthur Rackham, Carl Larsson, and Beatrix Potter, for example, with a heaping teaspoon of Pre-Raphaelitism, a sprinkle of Angela Carter's fairy tales, a dash of Mary Oliver's poetry, a pinch of David Abram's ecological ideas. But other flavors that are just as crucial to the whole are perhaps only identifiable by me: my adolescent obsession with Romeo & Juliet, for instance (I can still recite the entire play by heart); or my teenage devotion to an obscure 1940s utopian novel called Islandia (somewhat dated now, and decidely non-pc, but it rocked my world at 16 nonetheless); or my late-20s Anais Nin fixation; or my life-long interest in the women war artists of WW1 and 2 (...and would you have guessed that last one?) Scholars, of course, build whole careers on identifying the ingredients of famous artistic soups -- but for artists, our job is to keep adding and stirring, and getting that taste just right.

The "Inspiration Board" above contains art by some of the people whose work has in some way influenced mine. I suspect many of you reading this blog will be able to identify the artists through the pictures themselves (hey, it's a party game, how many can you name?!)...but if any of them stump you, you'll find a list of all of them here (scroll to the bottom of the page).

No doubt there are younger artists out there for whom "Charles Vess" and "Didier Graffet" are promient names on their own lists of "Artists I Love." I imagine them now, pouring over books and prints, discussing their favorite writers and artists on chatboards, creating stories and drawings in which their influences are still too raw, unfiltered, and obvious...until slowly, slowly, something magical happens, and a style distinctly their own emerges. The work matures. Apprenticeship ends. They are artists.

Myth & Moor

by Terri Windling

I'm a writer, artist, and book editor interested in myth, folklore, fairy tales, and the ways they are used in contemporary arts. I workin the New York publishing industry but I live in alittle village at the edgeof Dartmoor in Devon, England, with my husband, dramatist Howard Gayton, our daughter, Victoria Windling-Gayton, and a dog named Tilly. If you'd like to know more, my publishing bio is here, and my website is here.

“There are some people who live in a dream world,” said Douglas Everett, “and some who face reality; and then there are those who turn one into the other.”

I want to be the latter.

About this blog:

Myth & Moor is a daily journal for musings about art, myth, books, village life, and the world-wide community of folks who create and love Mythic Arts.

"As a poet I hold the most archaic values on earth...the fertility of the soil, the magic of animals, the power-vision in solitude, the terrifying initiation and rebirth, the love and ecstasy of the dance, the common work of the tribe. I try to hold both history and the wilderness in mind, that my poems may approach the true measure of things and stand against the unbalance and ignorance of our times." - Gary Snyder

"People talk about medium. What is your medium? My medium as a writer has been dirt, clay, sand - what I could touch, hold, stand on, and stand for - Earth. My medium has been Earth. Earth in correspondence with my mind.” - Terry Tempest Williams

"This earth that we live on is full of stories in the same way that, for a fish, the ocean is full of ocean. Some people say when we are born we’re born into stories. I say we’re also born from stories." - Ben Okri

"Everything is held together with stories. That is all that is holding us together, stories and compassion." - Barry Lopez

Bookshelf

The Wood Wife:A mythic novel set in the Sonoran desert of Arizona. This link goes to the US edition; a UK edition is available here; and the new French edition is here. (For those who might be interested, I did a Q-&-A session on the book over on the Good Reads site.) Winner of the Mythopoeic Award.

Welcome to Bordertown:The latest volume in a classic Urban Fantasy series for YA readers. (An Audie Award nominee, for the audio book edition.) For information on the previous books, visit the Bordertown website.)

All told, I've published over forty books for children, teenagers and adults. More information on my writing, editing, and art can be found on my website.

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Please note that these books are linked to Amazon because it's the only book linking system that Typepad (this blogging service) has,but I urge you to please support your local bookstore if you plan to purchase any of the books mentioned on this blog.

Links to:

The Endicott StudioThe nonprofit organization for Mythic Arts that I ran for 22 years (starting in 1986), co-directed with author & folklorist Midori Snyder. The organization is currently on hiatus (while we catch our breaths and make a living), but a great deal of material from our Journal of Mythic Arts archive remains online.

Interstitial ArtsEllen Kushner, Delia Sherman, & other good folk look at writing and art in the interstices between genres. I was one of the founding board members, and remain an enthusiastic supporter.

Brain PickingsI have no connection whatsoever with this inspiring blog by Maria Popova. I list it here because it's my favorite site on the Web, and deserves to be widely known.